Synthesis of an azetidine using a bisactivated diol system has previously been reported such as in the work of Durealt (Tetrahedron, 1993, 49, 4201). However the intermediates in this and similar work are oils. Incorporation of oils in a large scale synthesis is not desireable as purification can be tedious. This invention describes novel compounds and a method of synthesizing enantiomerically enriched 2-azetidinemethanol compounds that is amenable to scaleup due to the incorporation of unique protecting group strategies thus allowing for purification through crystalline intermediates of compounds leading to the azetidine derivatives.